Bush At War

by Bob Woodward

  THE DEPUTIES MET later that day. The focus was post-Taliban reconstruction. They agreed that the United States should lead the efforts to stabilize post-Taliban Afghanistan, including helping with food production, health, education for women, small-scale infrastructure projects and clearing the country of land mines. What about the political structure? What about a security plan? What about a plan to explain it to the public?

  Hadley's to-do list included: action plan for the G-7 world economic powers, the World Bank and other international financial groups; find some countries to make multibillion-dollar commitments and announce them publicly; need to announce publicly an international conference on the political future; find some donors to pony up to the United Nations for Afghanistan; cables to be sent out making the requests of allies; find key allies who will quietly agree to help with post-Taliban security.

  In other words, nation building on a huge scale.

  THAT DAY, HANK, the counterterrorism special operations chief, met with General Franks in Tampa, Florida, for the first time. Using maps of Afghanistan, Hank laid out how CIA paramilitary teams working with the various opposition forces could get them moving. The opposition forces, chiefly the Northern Alliance, would do most of the ground fighting. If the U.S. repeated the mistakes of the Soviets by invading with a large land force, they would be doomed.

  Franks's Special Forces teams could follow on into Afghanistan and pinpoint targets that could be hit hard in U.S. bombing runs. On-the-ground human intelligence designating targets would allow extraordinarily specific and exact information for the precision bombs.

  Hank, under instructions from Tenet, made it clear that the paramilitary teams would be working for Franks, and in that spirit and somewhat contrary to recent practice, the CIA would give Franks and his Special Forces commanders the identities of all CIA assets in Afghanistan, their capabilities, their locations and the CIA's assessment of them. The military and the CIA were to work as partners.

  Franks basically agreed with the plan. He disclosed that the bombing campaign was scheduled to begin any time from October 6 on - three days away.

  Money talked in Afghanistan, Hank said, and they had millions in covert action money. On one level, the CIA could supply money to buy food, blankets, cold weather gear and medicine that could be air-dropped. The fighters on both sides, and their families who often traveled with the fighters, would be cold and starving. The humanitarian aid would work to the U.S. advantage.

  Warlords or sub-commanders with dozens or hundreds of fighters could be bought off for as little as $50,000 in cash, Hank said. If we do this right, we can buy off a lot more of the Taliban than we have to kill.

  Good, the general said.

  BUSH WENT TO New York City that morning for a rally near Ground Zero and a private meeting with business leaders about rebuilding the city. "I truly believe," he told the executives, "that out of this will come more order in the world - real progress to peace in the Middle East, stability with oil-producing regions."

  He was less optimistic about the threat of more attacks. "I can't tell you whether the bastards will strike again."

  THE NSC meeting on Thursday, October 4, General Myers had some good news. "CSAR in the north will be stood up by Monday in Uzbekistan" - meaning ready to go. "Special Forces are beginning to flow into Oman. The Kitty Hawk will be in place October 13, which will allow things to go forward in the south. I wouldn't preclude SOF in the north." Within days of the initial bombing, ground operations by the Special Operations Forces would be possible.

  As for post-Taliban Afghanistan, Wolfowitz and Rice talked about getting other countries to put up money for rebuilding.

  "Who will run the country?" Bush asked.

  We should have addressed that, Rice thought. Her most awful moments were when the president thought of something that the principals, particularly she, should have anticipated.

  No one had a real answer, but Rice was beginning to understand that that was the critical question. Where were they headed?

  to thank the staff members. Near the end of his remarks he teared up. Why today? Ari Fleischer wondered from the front row.

  Back at the White House, Bush motioned Fleischer to the Oval Office. "We got a report this morning of a case of anthrax in Florida," he said. "We don't know how widespread it is. We don't know if it's more than one. We don't know a whole lot."

  It was the first time Fleischer had seen worry in his eyes.

  Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old photo editor for The Sun tabloid in Florida, was very ill with inhalation anthrax, a deadly disease long associated with possible biological warfare. The first announcements said it was an isolated case and probably arose from natural causes, and the news stories ran in the middle pages of the newspaper.

  The news about anthrax was about to build.

  In a private meeting with the emir of Qatar, Bush showed how much he was following the signals intelligence, especially on bin Laden. "We know Osama bin Laden called his mother," Bush told the emir. "One of these days, he'll make the mistake, and we'll get him."

  APPEARING BEFORE PARLIAMENT on Thursday, Prime Minister Blair presented evidence that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was responsible for the September 11 attacks. His office released a 16-page unclassified document on the Internet which laid out the most detailed case yet but did not disclose extremely specific and sensitive intelligence.

  The release of the British report came 12 days after Secretary of State Powell had promised a public presentation of evidence amid calls from allies and foreign leaders. Also on Thursday, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry announced that the U.S. had supplied sufficient evidence of bin Laden's complicity in September 11 that they could bring an indictment in court. The clear endorsement of the American case by a Muslim state was a boon.

  In a day, the issue of a white paper that had put Powell and Rumsfeld at loggerheads had floated away.

  ON PAGE SEVEN of the 11-page TOP SECRET/CODEWORD Threat Matrix for Friday, October 5, was a report from a Defense Intelligence Agency source with the codename "Dragonfire," who had said terrorists might have obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the former Soviet Union stockpile. It might be headed for New York City, the source had alleged. Detonation of even a small nuclear device in a city could kill tens of thousands and create unimaginable panic. It was the nightmare scenario everyone worried about most.

  The Threat Matrix, however, deemed Dragonfire's report "non-credible" because it had technical details wrong. It turned out the source was a U.S. citizen who said he had overheard some unidentified people discussing the possibility of a nuclear weapon in a Las Vegas casino. It was totally bogus, but the atmosphere was such that reports like the Dragonfire claim regularly filled the Threat Matrix. No one wanted to leave any threat unmentioned.

  THE PRESIDENT WAS in the Oval Office later that day reviewing a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon had suggested that the United States was on the road to repeating the mistakes of Munich in 1938 when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

  "Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense," Sharon said, addressing the American president. "Israel will not be Czechoslovakia."

  "We're going to respond to that, yes?" Rice asked Bush.

  "Of course I'm going to respond to that."

  They discussed a forceful blast back. Someone cautioned, "You're going to get a headline that says: 'BUSH RAPS SHARON.' "

  "Mr. President," Rice said, "he just called you Neville Chamberlain. I think it's time to say something pretty strong."

  Fleischer later called Sharon's comment "unacceptable," as Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships, bulldozers and ground troops moved into Palestinian-controlled West Bank territory.

  BUSH CALLED NICK Calio, the White House chief of congressional liaison, to the Oval Office.

  "Nicky," Bush said, "you take this, you get this up to them now. We're not..."

  Calio had a perplexed look on h
is face.

  "Do you know about this?" Bush asked. He was furious about leaks to the news media.

  "Can I see it?" Calio asked, as Bush handed him a single sheet of paper. Calio read quickly. It was a memo to Powell, O'Neill, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Tenet and FBI Director Mueller. Subject: "Disclosures to Congress." The order, signed by Bush, said that only the so-called Big Eight - the Republican and Democratic leaders of both Senate and House, and the chairmen and ranking members of the two intelligence committees - could receive classified information or sensitive law enforcement information.

  "No," Calio said, saying that he had not seen it.

  "Well, they were supposed to tell you," the president said, referring to Andy Card or the White House counsel.

  (That morning The Washington Post had run a front page story headlined "FBI, CIA Warn Congress of More Attacks" that I had coauthored with Susan Schmidt. The story focused on a classified briefing that CIA and FBI officials had given on the Hill earlier in the week. We reported the high probability of another terrorist attack, and said one intelligence official had told Congress there was a "100 percent" chance of an attack if the United States retaliated with military force in Afghanistan.)

  Calio tried to explain to the president that such a restriction would be a disaster. It would be like cutting off oxygen to 527 of the 535 members of Congress.

  "I don't care. Get it up there. This is what's going to happen," Bush ordered.

  "Okay," said Calio, "but I just want to tell you that you can expect - "

  "I'm not defending it," Bush said. "Do you get the picture here?"

  Calio nodded.

  "Get it up there to them, okay?"

  "Fine," Calio said.

  "It's tough shit," the president said.

  Bush later talked with Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the longest conversation Graham had ever had with Bush, and he heard a real stream of Texas profanity.

  Calio then undertook what was basically an intense Middle East-style shuttle diplomacy between Bush and the Congress trying to bring both toward the middle. Finally Bush agreed to lift the order. He had sent the message that he could cut them off if he wanted.

  SECRETARY RUMSFELD APPEARED at a press conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Friday with President Karimov. Karimov said that Uzbekistan would grant the U.S. use of its airspace and one of its airfields for humanitarian and search and rescue operations, and was ready to step up cooperation for the exchange of intelligence.

  A reporter asked what the United States had offered in exchange. "There have been no specific quid pro quos if that is what you are looking for," Rumsfeld replied.

  Karimov quickly added, "I would like to emphasize that there has been no talk of quid pro quos so far."

  Rumsfeld, his eye down the road, said what Karimov wanted 10 hear. "The interest of the United States is of a long-standing relationship with this country," he assured all, "and not something that 15 focused on the immediate problem alone."

  AT THE NSC meeting that morning, General Franks joined in on the secure video from CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa.

  "Tommy, are we ready to go?" Bush asked.

  "Yes, sir, we're ready to go."

  "We need a summary of the targets," the president said.

  The first day's strike was going to be somewhat small - only about 31 targets overall. They were going to use about 50 cruise missiles, 15 land-based bombers and about 25 strike aircraft from aircraft carriers. They would attack bin Laden training camps, the Taliban air defense system and any concentrations of al Qaeda if there were any that could be located.

  Defense was also rescrubbing the so-called no strike list, targets that were not supposed to be hit - power plants, schools, hospitals and especially mosques - to show it was not an attack against the Afghan population. The list was to be updated each day.

  "We need to discuss rules of engagement," Myers said, proposing that they do it the next day by secure video.

  The president said he had told Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott of the coming strikes. He said he would inform House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt.

  When they turned to freezing terrorist assets, one of Bush's favorite instruments, Powell said, "Hezbollah and Hamas will go on the list of organizations subject to the financial war on terror."

  The president bristled. "We have a long-term campaign against terrorism," he said, "but first things first. We'll get to the others in due course." The wait and delay was getting to him. Al Qaeda and Afghanistan had to receive all the energy now. After he got his latest feeling of frustration off his chest he reminded them, yes, he was not backing off. "I'm committed to an overall effort in the war on terror." *

  Powell said that some of the international relief organizations were worried about dropping food to the Taliban and were trying to identify which villages were not controlled by them.

  Wolfowitz said there was good flow into Uzbekistan. Already nine of the necessary 67 planeloads had arrived and they would now be ready by October 7 when they hoped bombing would begin. He said, "We have 33,000 people in the theater. We had 21,000 in the theater September 10." So 12,000 had been recently deployed, though no U.S. military were yet inside Afghanistan.

  AT CIA HEADQUARTERS, Hank had hung a sign outside his office door taken from a recruiting poster used by British explorer Ernest Shackleton for his 1914 Antarctica expedition.

  It read, "Officers wanted for hazardous journey. Small Wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."

  Inside, Hank was about to dispatch the most important message of his career to the field. Approved by Tenet and Cofer Black, it was addressed to about a dozen stations and bases in Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan which were running secret assets and sources inside Afghanistan. This included the tribal allies and the Northern Alliance. The message also went to Gary's Jawbreaker team on the ground and to several other CIA paramilitary teams that were preparing to go in-country.

  The three-page message, headed "Military Strategy," listed these points:

  1. Instruct all tribal allies to ground and identify all their aircraft immediately.

  2. Instruct the tribals to cease all significant military movement - basically to stand down and hold in place.

  3. The future plan was to have the opposition forces drive to isolate enemy forces, but to wait before moving.

  4. Instruct all assets throughout Afghanistan to begin sabotage operations immediately everywhere. This would include tossing hand grenades through Taliban offices, disrupting Taliban convoys, pinning down those moving Taliban supplies and ammunition, and generally making pests of themselves. (This would be the first employment of concerted lethal force in Bush's war on terrorism.)

  5. Informing all of them that paramilitary insertions would go forward in the south and be combined with more specific air strikes.

  6. All would have to define no strike zones - hospitals, schools.

  7. All tribal factions and leaders should identify and locate primary targets.

  8. Assets should try to identify possible escape routes out of Afghanistan for bin Laden and his al Qaeda leadership - and then try to set up reconnaissance of the routes for interdiction.

  9. Be prepared to interrogate and exploit prisoners.

  10. Assess humanitarian needs.

  They were instructed to share the full text with General Franks to make sure of complete transparency with the military commander.

  Hank closed the message, "We are fighting for the CT [counterterrorist] objectives in the Afghan theater and although this sets high goals in very uncertain, shifting terrain, we are also fighting for the future of CIA/DOD integrated counterterrorism warfare around the globe. While we will make mistakes as we chart new territory and new methodology, our objectives are clear, and our concept
of partnership is sound."

  Leaflets to be dropped into Afghanistan were prepared with a crude drawing of a military tank wedged between two small Afghan-style buildings.

  In Pashto, Dari and English, the leaflet read, "The Taliban are using civilian areas to hide their equipment, endangering everyone in the area. Flee any area where military equipment or personnel are located."

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, October 6, at 8:30 A.M., the president was at Camp David for the secure video NSC meeting. Tensions over the disputed province of Kashmir were flaring.

  "We're watching India," Powell said. "We're waiting for a readout of Blair conversations."

  The British prime minister had promised to make calls to defuse the intensifying situation with Pakistan over Kashmir. "We've instructed our ambassadors to go into capitals - then we'll decide whether the president needs to call." By way of understatement, he added, "Want to head this thing off."

  On Israel, Powell referred to Sharon's statement that Israel would not allow itself to become Czechoslovakia. "Sharon's behavior in the last few days borders on the irrational," Powell said, thinking he might say that about the Israeli leader on a regular basis.

  Rumsfeld, back from his whirlwind trip, reported that he had been rather successful as a diplomat. The Saudis, he said, were gracious and warm, even complimentary. The only negative was their worry that the United States was unhappy, and he believed he had "tamped down" that idea. But the Saudis definitely need senior-level attention regularly.

  In Uzbekistan, they had closed the deal on access. "The Uzbeks were friendlier at the end of the meeting than the beginning."

  Rumsfeld said that he needed an increase on the ceiling for reserves, up to 300,000 from the current level of 50,000. "We need more headroom."

  "You want to do it on Monday?" Bush asked. ; ;

  "Yes," Rumsfeld said.

  Though some 80 countries had made offers to help, only the British would participate in the first wave of strikes.